The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism Quotes

“Your mind is yours—and yours alone. If you focus on healthy thoughts and develop balanced opinions about your situation, you will cultivate positive emotions and find lasting enthusiasm to live your best life. You will see negativity for what it is: a waste of energy. You will learn to stop allowing fear, anger, and other anxieties to grow. You will discover not only that you can weather challenges, but you often find them enjoyable.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Let us go to our sleep with joy and gladness; let us say ‘I have lived; the course which Fortune set for me is finished.’ And if God is pleased to add another day, we should welcome it with glad hearts. A person is happiest, and is secure in his own possession of himself, who can await the morrow without apprehension. When a man has said: ‘I have lived!’, every”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“These two things must be cut away: fear of the future, and the memory of past sufferings. The latter no longer concerns me, and the future does not concern me yet.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“To stop talking about what the good person is like, and just be one.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10:16”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“As you aim for just outcomes, realize that what you control are your intentions and the actions that come from them. Focusing on your own actions will give you the best chance of reaching external goals.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“•Wisdom”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human—however imperfectly—and fully embrace the pursuit you’ve embarked on.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5:9”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“The Stoics inherited the four virtue categories—Wisdom, Courage, Justice, and Moderation—”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“What Stoicism had taught the teacher was to only accept the fact that a storm was happening. Other thoughts, such as “this is dangerous” or “we’re going to drown,” he never accepted, instead choosing to focus on keeping everyone afloat. Learning to guide your thought process in this way will allow you to put stresses aside and focus your energy on what you control.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“remind yourself that there are two ways to engage, and pick the better one.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Take a breath. Draw your attention to the present moment. The past is finished. The future is unknowable. Leave anxieties about the future alone; they solely exist in your imagination. You can only act in the present.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“•The Discipline of Action relates to your interactions with other people. The aim is to seek healthy, positive relationships with everyone you meet, even knowing others may not reciprocate. •The Discipline of Assent concerns your thoughts about life. You learn to separate your initial reactions to the world from your final judgments about the world. You refuse to walk down mental paths that lead to negativity, instead evaluating your thoughts in order to align with wisdom.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“•The Discipline of Desire entails a radical realignment of your values as you work to desire only what is within your complete control.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Dichotomy of Control, which helps me focus on those things I have the ability to change.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“The next time you do anything, remind yourself: “I want to do this task, and, at the same time, I want to protect my harmony.” Ask yourself: •In the task before me, what challenges could arise?”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Pleasure’s opposite is Joy, the state of mind that finds positivity despite the impermanence of things.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“When you’re with a person that you care for, draw your attention to them, to the moment you are sharing. Don’t allow your thoughts to be lost in desires or fears of the future. At the same time, don’t forget that everything you have is on loan. Someday you will return it. This makes the present moment all the more important. Why waste your time on the unknowable future when you can find happiness in the present moment? Invest fully in the now so that when change comes, there will be no sense of loss, because you truly got all you could from the time that you had.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Stoicism trains you to move your emotional well-being away from Fortune’s indifferent gifts and to re-center it on virtue, your own best efforts in life, which is firmly within your own control.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Moderation (sôphrosunê) is control over desires and, along with Courage, it is an expected outcome of practicing the Discipline of Desire. Moderation stands in opposition to excess. If you desire only virtue, then you can be reasonable in what you want and generous with what you have been given. Moderation can be divided into: •appropriateness”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Another way to understand moderation is to think of yourself as a guest in someone else’s house. How do you treat things when you know you’re only borrowing them? All things are impermanent. What you have today will be used up, might break or be taken away, and won’t be yours forever. If you live as if things are permanent, in a world where that is never true, it will hurt to lose them. That hurt comes from unrealistic thoughts. If you assume that good health is your right, then even”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“When your desires and aversions are things or situations, you will think of moments that don’t provide what you want or moments that confront you with things you’d avoid as “bad.” If you stop focusing on outcomes—but instead desire being your best at every moment—you’ll understand that every situation provides an opportunity to practice virtue.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“each”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“You are meant to remain in harmony no matter the ups and downs of life.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Stoicism says you can thrive in life—no matter your circumstances.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“If you want lasting happiness, instead, properly arrange what’s inside you—not the things surrounding you.”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“When any person treats you badly or speaks ill of you, remember that they do this because they think they must. It’s not possible for them to do what you think is right, but only what seems right to them . . . if you understand this you will have a milder temper with those who revile you because you can always say, ‘it seemed so to them.’” —Epictetus, Enchiridion 42”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“I used to be a get-the-last-word-in sort of person. It really bothered me if I didn’t “win” a discussion. Over the years, Stoicism taught me to value how I conduct myself during conversations more than how the interaction ends. Did I say what I meant to say? Did I give people a chance to understand my point of view? Did I listen to everyone else with my honest attention? If so, I did my best. Nowadays, if someone tries to belittle me, misrepresent my point of view, or demand attention I don’t owe them, I barely notice. I’m content, and everything else is someone else’s issue. It’s freeing!”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity

“If you have received an impression of any pleasure, guard yourself and create a delay. Then think of the time you will enjoy the pleasure, and the time after, when you will repent and be disappointed with yourself. On the other side, imagine your happiness if you resist the temptation and get to commend yourself for the victory.” —Epictetus, Enchiridion”
― Matthew Van Natta, The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity